LATIN GRAMMY WINNER
De Todas Las Flores by Natalia Lafourcade
- PLAYLISTS
– 1-hour black and white lyric video covering all 12 songs on YouTube
– On Spotify - WEBSITE
Lafourcade’s extensive website contains complete lyrics to De Todas Las Flores, photos, videos and more
- INTERVIEW with NPR’s World Cafe host, Raina Douris. (42 mins)
“It has been a wonderful trip, and I have a lot of love for this album,” says Lafourcade.
(David Wolff-Patrick photo)
NATALIA LAFOURCADE’s DE TODAS LAS FLORES
Renowned Mexican musician says her latest album is “my salvation, my relief, the replanting of seeds”
She started her career as a precocious 19 year-old Mexican talent making late 90s pop – with a twist of bossa nova. Twenty years later the diminutive Natalia Lafourcade is a mighty Latin musical force – revered and much loved.
In exploring the music of her country she has come to embody it. Her deep knowledge of its many genres has allowed collaboration with the best players ranging from Uruguay’s Jorge Drexler and Cuban Buena Vista Social Club icon Omara Portuondo and many more.
Ten days ago she picked up two Latin Grammy trophies in Seville, Spain for her 2022 musical masterpiece De Todas Las Flores (Of All The Flowers) making her the most awarded woman in Latin Grammy history with 17 wins. She’s also won two regular Grammy Awards.
Her tenth album features her first set of original compositions since 2015’s breakthrough project Hasta La Raiz (To The Root). Poignant and poetic, the collection is a moving musical diary of a romantic split in 2018. Its 12 meticulously crafted songs cover the emotional gamut – sadness, acceptance, understanding, rebirth. The music features introspective, tender and joyous melodies beautifully arranged and performed by renowned players like edgy New York guitarist Marc Ribot and longtime friend and producer Adán Jodorowsky (aka Adanowsky).
“Breakups can be so deep, at the cellular level, that you have to reconstruct your life and reconnect with yourself,” Lafourcade told the New York Times last year. “It’s difficult work, forgiving yourself, forgiving the other person,” she says. “So I went to walk in the mountains, and returned to my garden, a metaphor for a field of emotions and possibilities that had to be explored.”
Musically the album embraces familiar Latin genres including bossa nova, Cuban son and danzon, jarocho (from her home state of Verazcruz), bolero, samba, cumbia and ranchera. The intricate blend of these sounds builds a warm and enveloping sonic palette. But, just as she cuts to the core with occasionally direct lyrics, she welcomes measured bursts of raucous and cacophonous sound in tracks like Muerte (Death), Maria La Curandera and Canta La Arena (The Sand Sings). Marc Ribot’s subtle but searing licks wind through these songs along with blasts of caterwauling saxophones and trumpets.
Canta La Arena is an homage to nature, a theme she’s examining for the first time. She told the New York Times: “One of my most profound inspirations was Mother Earth and her energy. I had never explored something like that in my music: the cadence of water, of wind, of a storm, of a wave, of fire, of the playfulness that exists in all the elements in balance. It’s something mystical that must be read between the lines.”
Lafourcade premiered De Todas Las Flores live at Carnegie Hall last October joined by guests David Byrne (above), Jorge Drexler and Omara Portuondo. (Edwin Erazo photo)
A lot of love for the album
When Fourcade introduced the album at Carnegie Hall a year ago she got an immediate standing ovation before singing a note.
“It has been a wonderful trip, and I have a lot of love for this album,” she tells Rolling Stone. “This time, the process has been a years-long voyage. It’s an extremely personal musical diary, and it took me a while to realize how much I needed to be back in the studio, how much I needed to give myself space to make something that came out of me.”
A screen grab from the video
The one-hour album lyric video
Fourcade and her team produced a one-hour video to accompany De Toda Las Flores. The black and white piece features Mexican landscapes and scenes from numerous in studio recordings. Best of all – for those of us who have little or no Spanish – the English lyrics are superimposed throughout the show.
The lyrics are also available on Lafourcade’s website.
25 November 2023
PLAYLISTS
On YouTube
https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=_vVo6HhNOsA
